Latest / The Human Factor: Exploring the Intersection of Humanity, Technology, and Transformation / S2 Episode 014: The Identity Crisis of Expertise - When What You Know Becomes What Holds You Back

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S2 Episode 014: The Identity Crisis of Expertise - When What You Know Becomes What Holds You Back · The Human Factor: Exploring the Intersection of Humanity, Technology, and Transformation

0:05
I was working with a pharmaceutical company.
0:07
With my team, we dove into planning for a major digital
0:11
transformation of the clinical trial processes.
0:15
The company had invested heavily in AI powered analytics that
0:19
would fundamentally change how the research scientists analyzed
0:23
patient data. The technology sound the
0:28
business case was compelling. And yet three other most
0:33
respected senior scientists had become the biggest obstacles to
0:38
adoption. These weren't resistors in any
0:42
traditional sense. They had signed off on the
0:45
initiative. They had attended every training
0:48
session. They publicly praised the new
0:52
capabilities. But behind closed doors, they
0:56
were systematically undermining adoption through a pattern that
1:00
I've come to recognize. They questioned the methodology.
1:05
They requested additional validation studies.
1:09
They proposed extended parallel testing protocols.
1:14
Every concern was scientifically legitimate.
1:18
Every delay was professionally justifiable.
1:22
It took us three months to understand what was really
1:25
happening. These weren't scientists who
1:29
were protecting their organization from a bad
1:31
technology decision. These were people who were
1:36
protecting themselves from an identity crisis.
1:40
For 20 years, their careers had been built on a specific form of
1:44
expertise, on knowing how to interpret data in ways the
1:49
junior colleagues couldn't. The new AI has changed their
1:54
tolls. It threatened to make their hard
1:58
won intuition obsolete. The resistance wasn't about the
2:03
transformation, it was about who they would become if the
2:08
transformation succeeded. I'm Kevin Novak, CEO of 2040,
2:13
Digital professor at the University of Maryland and
2:17
author of the book The Truth About Transformation, Leading in
2:21
the Age of AI, Uncertainty and Human Complexity, along with the
2:26
Ideas and Innovations weekly newsletter.
2:29
Today we're exploring the identity crisis of expertise.
2:34
Why the very knowledge and skills that make people
2:38
successful become psychological barriers that prevent them from
2:44
adapting the change. Welcome to the Human Factor
2:48
Broadcast Season 2, The Shell that explores the intersection
2:53
of humanity, technology, and transformation, along with the
2:58
psychology behind transformation success.
3:02
If you followed Season 1, you heard us explore why
3:06
transformations fail at the psychological level, from the
3:10
hidden resistance patterns that operate beneath the parent
3:14
support to the communication paradoxes that create confusion
3:19
even when leaders say the right things.
3:22
We examined why smart people make poor decisions under
3:25
change, why organizations struggle to let go of approaches
3:30
that no longer serve them, and why vulnerability creates the
3:36
foundation for authentic organizational adaptation.
3:41
Season 2 then shifts from diagnosis to intervention.
3:46
Elizabeth Stewart will be back for a few episodes to share her
3:49
thoughts and wisdom, and I have a variety of guests lined up as
3:54
CE OS who have lived through change and transformation and
3:58
have much insight and advice to share.
4:01
I'm excited for the episodes and learning ahead, and I hope you
4:05
are as well. We're going to be moving from
4:09
understanding why change and transformation often fails to
4:13
exploring how leaders can actually address the
4:15
psychological and other barriers that determine success or
4:19
failure. And today, we're starting with
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what I believe is the most underestimated psychological
4:26
force and organizational change identity.
4:30
In Episode 5 of Season 1, we explored the psychology of
4:34
letting go. Why the phrase We've always done
4:38
it this way has such a powerful grip on organizational behavior.
4:44
In Episode 8, we mapped 12 types of hidden resistance that appear
4:50
as support while systematically preventing progress.
4:54
Today's episode then, goes deeper into the mechanism that
4:58
drives both of these patterns. What happens psychologically
5:03
when change in transformation threatens not just how people
5:06
work, but who they believe themselves to be?
5:11
This is not a minor distinction. When you understand that
5:14
identity, rather than preference or habit, is the real barrier to
5:19
change, Everything about how you lead change in transformation
5:23
needs to shift. Let me show you why.
5:28
To understand why expertise creates such powerful barriers
5:32
to change and transformation, we need to understand how
5:36
professional identity forms in the 1st place.
5:40
Organizational behavior scholar Blake Ashworth has spent decades
5:44
studying how people construct their work identities, and his
5:48
research reveals something crucial For most professionals,
5:53
there's no meaningful separation between what they know and who
5:57
they are. Think about how you introduce
6:01
yourself at a professional conference.
6:04
You don't say I perform the functions associated with the
6:07
accounting profession. You say I'm an accountant.
6:12
That linguistic choice reflects A psychological reality.
6:17
Your profession isn't something that you do, it's something you
6:21
are. Your expertise isn't a tool that
6:24
you use, it's the foundation of your professional identity.
6:30
This fusion of identity and expertise develops over years of
6:35
professional socialization. When you spend five years
6:39
mastering a complex skill set. When you build your reputation
6:44
on knowing things that others don't.
6:46
When your colleagues come to you as the expert, when your
6:50
compensation and status depends on your specialized knowledge,
6:56
something profound happens. Neurologically, your brain
7:01
literally rewires itself around that expertise, and neural
7:06
pathways that support your professional competence become
7:10
intertwined with the networks that maintain your sense of
7:14
self. Research here in cognitive
7:17
neuroscience has shown that threats to our sense of
7:20
competence activate overlapping brain systems with those
7:25
involved in threats to our physical safety.
7:28
This aligns with broader social threat research demonstrating
7:32
the challenges the status, competence, and belonging
7:36
trigger the same defensive responses originally evolved to
7:40
protect us from physical danger. When change in transformation
7:45
suggests that your expertise might become obsolete, your
7:50
brain doesn't process that as an intellectual challenge requiring
7:54
adaptation, It processes that as an attack on your survival.
8:01
The fear response you experience isn't an overreaction, it's a
8:06
biological appropriate response to what your brain perceives as
8:11
a genuine danger. This is why rational arguments
8:16
about the benefits of change and transformation often fail with
8:20
experienced professionals. You're not dealing with a
8:23
knowledge gap that can be filled with information, you're dealing
8:28
with an identity threat that triggers deep psychological
8:32
defense mechanisms. The more expertise someone has,
8:36
the more their identity depends on that expertise, and the more
8:41
threatened they feel when transformation requires them to
8:44
become beginners all over again. Developmental psychologists use
8:50
a concept called identity foreclosure to describe what
8:53
happens when people commit to an identity without genuinely
8:58
exploring alternatives. It was originally applied to
9:01
adolescent development. The concept has powerful
9:05
implications for understanding why successful professional
9:08
struggle would change and transformation.
9:12
So here's how identity foreclosure works in
9:15
professional contexts. Early in your career, you
9:18
discover something that you're good at.
9:21
You invest in developing that confidence.
9:24
You build a reputation around it.
9:27
Opportunities come to you because of it.
9:30
Over time, your entire professional life becomes
9:33
organized around this identity. You hire people who complement
9:37
your expertise. You take on projects that
9:40
leverage your strengths. You avoid situations that might
9:44
reveal your weaknesses. You've created what feels like a
9:49
very successful, stable professional identity.
9:53
So in professional life, identity foreclosure is rarely A
9:58
conscious choice. It's more often the result of
10:01
momentum, years of incentives, recognition, reinforcement, and
10:08
reward that gradually narrows how someone can imagine
10:13
themselves. But here's the trap.
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The more successful you become with that identity, the more
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foreclosed your options become. You haven't explored who else
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you might be professionally because your current identity
10:29
has worked so very well. You haven't developed the
10:34
psychological flexibility to see yourself any differently because
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you have never needed to. Your success then, is created a
10:42
prison of competence where you can only imagine yourself as who
10:47
you already are. Carol Dweck's research on
10:52
mindset provides another lens lens on this phenomenon.
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Dweck distinguishes between fixed mindset, where people
11:00
believe their abilities are static trains, and growth
11:04
mindset, where people believe their abilities can develop
11:08
through effort and learning. What Dweck's research shows, and
11:13
this is critical for understanding change and
11:15
transformation resistance, is that the fixed mindset isn't
11:20
just about intelligence, it's about identity.
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People with fixed mindsets have built their self concept around
11:30
being a certain kind of person with certain kinds of abilities.
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Any challenge to those abilities becomes a challenge to their
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fundamental sense of self. Now here's where this gets
11:45
complicated for leaders. In my experience, the fixed
11:50
mindset often correlates with professional success.
11:54
The person who committed early and deeply to developing
11:58
expertise, who's built their entire career around being the
12:02
expert in a specific domain, often succeeded precisely
12:07
because of that focus. The same psychological pattern
12:11
that enabled their success now prevents their adaptation.
12:15
When you tell a senior engineer with 25 years of experience that
12:20
the programming paradigm they mastered is being replaced by AI
12:24
assisted development, you're not asking them to learn a new
12:27
skill, you're asking them to stop being who they've been for
12:33
1/4 of a century and become someone they can't yet imagine.
12:38
The resistance isn't stubbornness or the fear of
12:41
technology. It's a psychological immune
12:44
response to identity, to solution, which in a note is
12:49
something about how organizations typically respond
12:53
to this resistance. We send people to training
12:56
programs that assume the problem is knowledge.
13:00
We create incentives structured so to assume the problem is
13:05
motivation. We provide coaching that assumes
13:09
the problem is behavior. But the actual problem is
13:13
identity, and none of these interventions address it
13:16
directly. We're treating symptoms while
13:21
the underlying condition continues to drive resistance.
13:26
Through my work with organizations across industries
13:28
and sectors, I've identified 5 distinct identity threats that
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transformation creates for experienced professionals.
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Understanding these threats is essential for leaders who want
13:40
to address resistance at its source rather than fighting its
13:45
symptoms. What's important here to
13:47
understand is that these threats rarely appear in isolation and
13:52
most real change in transformations.
13:54
Experienced professionals experience several of them
13:58
simultaneously, which is why the emotional response often feels
14:03
disproportionate to the change or transformation itself.
14:07
The first identity thread is competence thread.
14:10
This is the most obvious form, and we touched on it earlier
14:14
across episodes in Season 1. When transformation requires new
14:19
skills, people who have built their identity around being
14:22
highly competent suddenly face the prospect of becoming
14:26
beginners all over again. For someone who has spent years
14:30
being the person others come to for answers, the idea of not
14:35
knowing is psychologically intolerable.
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The research on this is clear. Competence threat triggers
14:44
defensive behaviors that look like resistance but are actually
14:48
attempts to preserve a coherent sense of self.
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When you see someone raising endless questions about a new
14:55
methodology, requesting additional training before
14:58
implementation, or questioning whether the organization is
15:02
really ready for change, they're often seeing competence threat
15:06
in action. The second identity threat is
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relevance threat. This goes beyond competence to
15:14
something even more fundamental. Competence thread asks, can I do
15:19
the new thing, while relevance thread asks, will anyone need
15:25
what I do? In an era of rapid technological
15:28
change, this thread is increasingly acute.
15:32
The experienced professional who has spent years developing deep
15:36
expertise in the domain now watches this.
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AI tools can perform aspects of that work in seconds.
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Their question isn't whether they can learn the new tools,
15:47
it's whether the learning actually matters.
15:51
Search on perceived skill obsolescence consistently shows
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that fear of becoming irrelevant often emerges well before any
16:01
actual decline in capability. People aren't reacting to what
16:05
they can't do yet, they're reacting to what they fear no
16:09
one will need anymore. So if the organization doesn't
16:12
need human expertise in their domain anymore, what is their
16:16
role? Who are they if they are not the
16:20
expert? The third identity thread.
16:23
The status thread. Professional identity isn't just
16:27
about what you know. It's about your position in the
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organizational hierarchy of knowledge.
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Senior experts have status because they know things others
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don't. They're consulted on important
16:41
decisions. Their opinions carry weight.
16:45
Their expertise is valued. Change in transformation often
16:50
flattens these knowledge hierarchies across industries.
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Studies show that people will tolerate heavier workloads,
16:59
steeper learning curves, and greater uncertainty if their
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status is preserved, But they will actively resist even
17:08
beneficial change when status is threatened.
17:12
When junior employees with digital native skills can
17:15
outperform senior experts in a new system, the traditional
17:19
status markers become meaningless.
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The senior expert hasn't just lost a skill advantage, they've
17:26
lost their place in the organizational pecking order.
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Their identity as someone who matters, whose voice carries
17:33
weight, is under direct threat. The 4th identity thread is
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narrative thread. Every professional has a story
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they tell themselves about their career, a narrative that makes
17:46
sense of the choices that they've made, the sacrifices
17:50
that they have accepted, the path that they have followed.
17:55
Transformation and change can invalidate that narrative.
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The person, then, who spends 10 years developing deep expertise
18:03
in the technology that's now being replaced, has to confront
18:07
uncomfortable questions. Was all that investment wasted?
18:12
Did I choose the wrong path? What does my career mean if the
18:18
skills I work so hard to develop?
18:20
These aren't just practical questions about future
18:22
employment, they're existential questions about whether your
18:26
professional life has meaning. The 5th identity threat is
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community threat. Professional identity is never
18:34
purely individual. We define ourselves partly
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through the communities that we belong to, the colleagues who
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share our expertise, the professional networks built
18:46
around common knowledge. Changing transformation can
18:50
dissolve these communities. When an organization moves from
18:54
1 technology platform to another, the community of
18:57
experts in the old platform doesn't just lose their
19:00
technical skills, they lose their professional tribe.
19:05
The relationships then built through shared expertise, the
19:09
sense of belonging to a community of practice, and the
19:12
identity that comes from being part of something larger than
19:15
yourself. All of this is at risk.
19:19
People often resist change in transformation not because they
19:23
fear learning new skills, but because they fear losing the
19:27
community that gives their professional life meaning.
19:31
When you look at change in transformation resistance
19:34
through the lens, it stops being a frustrating obstacle and it
19:38
starts being an understandable human response to genuine
19:42
psychological threat. The senior scientists I
19:46
mentioned in my opening story weren't being difficult.
19:50
They were experiencing all five of these identity threats
19:53
simultaneously. Their competence, the relevance,
19:57
their status, the professional narrative and their community
20:01
were all under threat from a single initiative.
20:05
The resistance was proportional to what they stood to lose.
20:10
So what do we do with this understanding?
20:12
How do leaders address identity based resistance rather than
20:16
simply fighting against it? The framework I'm about to share
20:20
emerge from years of working with organizations where
20:24
identity threats were the primary barrier to change.
20:28
I call it the Identity Transition Framework, and it
20:31
addresses something most change management approaches ignore,
20:36
the psychological journey between letting go of who you
20:40
were and becoming who you need to be.
20:44
The first element is acknowledging the loss.
20:47
Most change in transformation communications focus entirely on
20:52
the future, the exciting capabilities, the competitive
20:56
advantages, the growth opportunities.
20:59
But for people experiencing identity threat, the future is
21:03
abstract, while the loss is very concrete and immediate.
21:08
Before they can move toward a new identity, they need
21:12
permission to grieve the one that they're losing.
21:16
This isn't weakness or sentimentality.
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It's psychology. Research on identity transitions
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show that people who are acknowledged are allowed to
21:26
acknowledge what they're leaving behind.
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Adapt more successfully than those who are pressured to
21:32
immediately embrace what's next. When loss is ignored, resistance
21:37
intensifies. When loss is named, adaptation
21:41
begins. When you tell someone that their
21:44
20 years of expertise in the old system will still be valuable
21:48
while simultaneously replacing that system with something
21:52
entirely new, you're creating a cognitive dissonance.
21:56
A better approach is honest acknowledgement.
22:00
Your expertise in the current approach represents real value,
22:05
and it's true that some of that specific knowledge won't
22:09
transfer directly to the new system.
22:12
That's a genuine loss, and it's reasonable to feel that way.
22:17
The second element is building bridges to new identity.
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People struggling with identity threat need to see a path from
22:24
who they are to who they could become, a path that preserves
22:30
the continuity rather than requiring complete reinvention.
22:35
This is where understanding the specific components of someone's
22:38
professional identity becomes crucial.
22:42
What do they value most about their expertise?
22:46
Is it the knowledge itself, or is it being the person others
22:50
come to for help? Is it the technical skills or is
22:55
it the judgment developed through years of experience?
22:59
Once you understand what aspects of identity are most threatened,
23:03
you can help people see how those aspects might transfer to
23:08
the new context. The senior scientist isn't
23:11
becoming irrelevant, they're becoming someone who can apply
23:15
decades of scientific judgment to validate and improve AI
23:20
generated insights. Their identity as a wise
23:23
counselor remains intact even as specific tool sets change.
23:29
The third element is creating legitimate peripheral
23:32
participation. This concept, originally
23:36
developed by Lade and Wegner, describes how newcomers learn
23:41
with communities of practice. They offer a powerful principle
23:45
that I've adapted for experience or as experienced professionals
23:50
navigating transformation. Rather than throwing people in
23:54
the full immersion where their novice status is constantly
23:57
visible, legitimate peripheral participation allows them to
24:01
engage with new practices in ways that don't threaten their
24:05
identity. As competent professionals, they
24:08
contribute their existing expertise while gradually
24:12
developing new capabilities. They mentor others in judgment
24:17
as well as context while learning alongside them about
24:21
the new tools. They then remain valuable to the
24:25
community even while their specific role within it has
24:28
evolved. This approach reduces the
24:31
competence threat that makes people defensive, and it creates
24:34
spaces for genuine learning. The 4th element is
24:38
reconstructing professional narrative.
24:41
Remember that people need a story that makes sense of their
24:44
career. When change in transformation
24:46
and validates that old story, you need to help them construct
24:50
new ones that on other past while creating meaning into the
24:54
future. The narrative isn't your old
24:57
skills are obsolete and you need to start over.
25:00
The narrative should become your career has been a journey of
25:03
continuous development, and this change in transformation is the
25:08
next chapter in that journey. The judgement, the perspective,
25:12
the wisdom that you've developed through decades of experience
25:15
are exactly what the organization needs to navigate
25:19
this transition successfully. So this isn't spanner
25:24
manipulation, it's genuinely reframing that helps people see
25:29
their situation in ways that support psychological adaptation
25:33
rather than resistance. The fifth element is building
25:38
new communities of practice. If change in transformation
25:41
threatens to dissolve the communities that give
25:44
professional life meaning, you need to create new communities
25:48
that can provide that same sense of belonging.
25:52
This might mean forming cohorts of people going through similar
25:55
transitions who can support each other.
25:58
It might also mean creating hybrid communities where the
26:01
experts in the old and new approaches work together on some
26:04
shared problems. It might mean establishing new
26:08
professional identities with their own communities, like
26:12
change and transformation pioneers, digital translators
26:17
who bridge then between legacy expertise and emerging
26:21
capabilities. Let me bring this framework to
26:23
life with the pharmaceutical company example I opened with.
26:27
Once I understood that those 3 senior scientists were
26:30
experiencing identity threat rather than simply resisting the
26:34
technology, the intervention changed completely.
26:37
Instead of more training on the new AI tools, we started by
26:41
explicitly acknowledging what they were being asked to give
26:45
up. In a private conversation with
26:47
each scientist, I said something like this.
26:51
You've spent 20 years developing intuition about data patterns
26:55
that younger researchers can't see.
26:58
The organization has benefited enormously from that expertise,
27:02
and now we're asking you to work with a system that might
27:05
challenge that intuition or make some of it less relevant.
27:10
That, of course, is a significant ask, and I want you
27:14
to know that we are recognizing what we're asking of you.
27:19
That acknowledgement alone changed the emotional
27:21
temperature of subsequent conversations.
27:24
They no longer felt they had to hide their concern behind
27:27
scientific objections. Next, I reframe the roles.
27:33
Instead of positioning them as users of the new AI system,
27:37
which of course then placed them in subordinate relationships to
27:41
the technology, we positioned them as validators, the experts
27:45
whose judgement the AI needed to be compared against.
27:50
Their job wasn't to learn to trust the AI.
27:54
Their job was to determine whether the AI deserved the
27:57
organization's trust. This preserved their identity as
28:02
the people with superior scientific judgment while
28:06
creating a natural pathway to engagement with the new tools.
28:12
I created an Insight Counsel where these senior scientists,
28:16
along with other experienced researchers, would review the AI
28:20
generated analysis and identify cases where the AI missed
28:24
something their human judgment caught.
28:26
This gave them legitimate peripheral participation, real
28:31
engagement with the new system that leveraged rather than
28:34
threaten their expertise. Over time, they developed their
28:38
own expertise and understanding the AIS patterns and of course
28:42
the limitations, but they came to it through the door of their
28:46
existing identity rather than by abandoning it.
28:51
Finally, we help them reconstruct the professional
28:54
narrative. Instead of scientists whose
28:56
expertise is being replaced by AI, the new story became
29:00
scientists who are helping the organization understand when AI
29:06
can and can't be trusted. That narrative positioned them
29:11
is more valuable in the AI era, not less, because they possessed
29:17
exactly the judgement and experience needed to prevent AI
29:21
from making mistakes the less experienced researchers wouldn't
29:25
catch. Within six months, those same
29:28
three scientists who had been the biggest obstacles became the
29:32
most credible advocates for the new system, not because they had
29:36
been convinced or defeated, but because the transformation had
29:40
been reframed in ways that address their identity rather
29:45
than threatening them. The identity crisis of expertise
29:49
I described today exists in every organization undergoing
29:53
significant change in transformation.
29:55
Your most experienced people, your subject matter experts,
29:59
your senior leaders who have built their careers on specific
30:02
knowledge and capabilities, all of them are facing questions
30:05
about who they will become if the change in transformation
30:09
succeeds. The resistance isn't about the
30:12
change or transformation, it's about themselves.
30:17
You know, most leaders fight this resistance as if it were
30:20
opposition to the initiative. They provide more information
30:24
about why the change is necessary.
30:26
They create incentives for adoption.
30:29
They apply pressure through accountability structures.
30:32
And they're consistently surprised when highly
30:35
intelligent, highly capable people continue to resist
30:39
changes that seem obvious and beneficial.
30:43
The framework that I shared today, the Identity Transition
30:46
Framework, offers a different approach.
30:49
Rather than fighting identity based resistance, it addresses
30:53
the underlying psychological needs that generate resistance
30:57
in the 1st place. Acknowledge the loss that people
31:01
are experiencing. Build bridges from current
31:05
identity to future identity. Create ways for people to
31:09
participate in new practices without threatening their sense
31:13
of confidence. Help them reconstruct
31:16
professional narratives that makes sense of the transition
31:20
and build communities that provide belonging in the new
31:24
organizational reality. Adult development research is
31:28
clear on this point. Identity transitions, not skill
31:32
gaps, are the hardest part of mid career change.
31:37
This isn't software, it's the hard work that determines
31:40
whether change and transformation succeeds or
31:43
fails. The 70% failure rate and
31:46
organizational change and transformation isn't primarily
31:50
about strategy or technology or project management.
31:54
It's about human psychology. And identity is at the center of
32:00
that psychology. In our next episode, Elizabeth
32:03
Stewart returns to help me explore something that connects
32:06
directly to what we've discussed today, the contagion effect, how
32:11
emotions spread through organizations during a change in
32:15
transformation. When leaders are experiencing
32:18
identity threat along with the anxiety that comes with it, that
32:23
emotion doesn't stay contained. It spreads through their teams,
32:27
through their departments, and through the entire organization
32:31
in ways that can accelerate adoption or silently destroy the
32:35
initiatives. Understanding emotional
32:38
contagion becomes essential for anyone leading change and
32:42
transformation, particularly in complex organizations.
32:46
If you found today's episode valuable, subscribe to the Human
32:50
Factor Podcast. Wherever you listen the podcast,
32:53
leave a rating and a comment, and please share this episode
32:57
with leaders in your organization who may be
33:00
wrestling with resistance from their most experienced people.
33:04
Understanding identity threat changes how you approach that
33:07
resistance. And if you want weekly insights
33:10
about change and transformation psychology, organizational
33:15
behavior, and the human factors that determine change and
33:18
transformation success, subscribe to my Ideas and
33:21
Innovations newsletter on Substance.
33:24
Until next time, remember, the people resisting aren't fighting
33:29
change. They're fighting for their sense
33:32
of self. When you understand that, you
33:35
can help them find a new self worth becoming.
33:40
This has been the HUMAN Factor podcast.
33:42
I'm Kevin Novak, thanks for watching or listening.